ABOUT THIS BOOK

A brilliant and engaging biography of one of the great modern Jewish thinkers.

Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929) was one of the central figures of the Jewish cultural and intellectual renaissance in Weimar Germany. His masterwork, The Star of Redemption (1921), is a classic of existential thought and Jewish philosophy, and his considerable legacy also includes his collaboration with Martin Buber on a key translation of the Hebrew Bible into German and the establishment of an education center in Frankfurt that brought together the most important young German-Jewish intellectuals of its time.

Rosenzweig’s personal biography is no less fascinating than his ideas and accomplishments. Drawing on unprecedented access to Rosenzweig’s unpublished personal correspondence, Paul Mendes-Flohr skillfully weaves together the threads of Rosenzweig’s life to give us a moving portrait of this towering figure—from his near-conversion to Christianity to his tragic diagnosis with ALS. Mendes-Flohr also closely explores Rosenzweig’s relationship with Margrit Huessy, who was a vital intellectual partner for Rosenzweig, as well as a muse and lover. He worked out many of his ideas about love both in conversation and consort with her, and Mendes-Flohr shows the importance of intimacy—both romantic and platonic—in the development of Rosenzweig’s thought.

Love Is Strong as Death provides a unique and insightful look at one of the most important modern Jewish thinkers.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Paul Mendes-Flohr was the Dorothy Grant Maclear Professor Emeritus of Modern Jewish History and Thought in the Divinity School and associate faculty in the Department of History at the University of Chicago, as well as professor emeritus of Jewish thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of many books, including Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent and Cultural Disjunctions: Post-Traditional Jewish Identities.

REVIEWS

“Beautifully rendered. . . Rosenzweig wrote in his diary: 'You believe you are philosophizing but you are only writing your own biography.' In Mendes-Flohr’s telling, the line becomes an imperative. Philosophy without a biography turns inhuman; biography without a philosophy becomes inert. Rosenzweig’s life—triangulated by love, narrowed by illness, expanded by the labor of translation as a form of spiritual respiration—suggests that thinking can be answerable again to what breaks and binds a person: the shock of being mortal, the summons of another voice.”

— The Wall Street Journal

“A vivid picture.”

— The Spectator

“Tracing the lives of a group of German-Jewish intellectuals from their youth and early maturity before the war, via their attempts to integrate their various identities during the Weimar period, to their experience of and reflections after the Second World War, Paul Mendes-Flohr takes us to the heart of the hyphen. What did it mean to be German-Jewish?”

— Times Literary Supplement

“Mendes-Flohr, with one foot in the twentieth century and the other in the twenty-first, has given us a valuable introduction to the man and his work.”

— First Things

“Paul Mendes-Flohr, one of the most distinguished scholars of modern Jewish thought, spent the better part of his career illuminating its central figures. His final book, Love Is Strong as Death: A Biography of Franz Rosenzweig, is in many ways the culmination of his life’s work, the product of more than forty years of engagement with its subject.”

— Politico

“In a diary entry from 1905, the young Franz Rosenzweig addressed himself: ‘You believe you are philosophizing, but you are only writing your own biography.’ In his stunning biography of Rosenzweig, Mendes-Flohr has himself produced a work of genuine philosophical depth. He has demonstrated in gripping detail just how intertwined life, thought, and faith were for Rosenzweig and how much his ‘new thinking’ was rooted in the existential and erotic dimensions of his commitment to the rejuvenation of Jewish life in Weimar Germany.”

— Eric Santner, author of "Untying Things Together: Philosophy, Literature, and a Life in Theory"

“Mendes-Flohr devoted his life to exploring the long and troubled history of modern German-Jewish thought. A superb stylist and intellectual historian, he was gifted with an erudition and eloquence that set him apart from more conventional scholars. His biographical study of Franz Rosenzweig was a labor of love and a testament to his long and distinguished career. Those who are unfamiliar with Rosenzweig will find in this book a graceful introduction; those who may feel they know Rosenzweig already will discover new reasons to revisit both the life and the work of this last and most enigmatic of philosophers.”

— Peter E. Gordon, author of "A Precarious Happiness: Adorno and the Sources of Normativity"

“Elegant, poignant, and erudite, this long-awaited book by the late Mendes-Flohr is a biographical tour de force. The living voices of Franz Rosenzweig and his interlocutors are made vivid and audible. The great philosopher was a man of flesh and blood, and his lived passions are eloquently evoked in this superbly crafted work.”

— Michael Fishbane, author of "Primacies: Experience, Expression, and the Jewish Imagination"

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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